1. Field of the Invention
The disclosure of Japanese Patent Application No. 2005-118381 filed on Apr. 15, 2005, including the specification, drawings and abstract is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
The invention relates to a vehicle integrated-control apparatus and method that controls multiple actuators mounted in a vehicle, in an integrated manner, using multiple control units.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. JP-A-05-85228 describes a vehicle integrated-control system in which control elements are hierarchically arranged. In the described vehicle integrated-control system, during the process of converting the input of a driver into a predetermined operation mode, at least one control element at a high hierarchical level passes the signal indicating the mode down to control elements at lower hierarchical levels. The lower-level systems are instructed to establish the mode indicated by the control elements at the higher hierarchical level.
The method of transmitting the input of the driver, which is adopted in the vehicle integrated-control system having the hierarchical structure, conforms with a top-down method in which the input of the driver (control target) is transmitted from control elements at the higher hierarchical levels to control elements at the lower hierarchical levels while being partitioned into control targets based on the mode that the lower-level systems is instructed to establish. However, in such a method, it is difficult to correct inappropriate partition when the control target is not appropriately partitioned based on the mode that the lower-level systems is instructed to establish, because there is no coordination portion that appropriately coordinates the control target with instructions from the lower-level systems. Also, if the specifications (functions and capacities) of the lower-level systems are changed, the method in which the control target from the upper-level systems is partitioned needs to be changed. It is, therefore, difficult to flexibly deal with such a change in the specifications of the lower-level systems.